APD receives H.E.A.T. grant for local DUI enforcement

The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) has awarded the Atlanta Police Department a $93,200 grant from its Highway Enforcement of Aggressive Traffic or H.E.A.T. program. Added to this award is $139,800 from the Atlanta Police Department (APD), bringing the total grant program budget to $233,000.

The H.E.A.T. program was designed to serve Georgia jurisdictions with the highest rates of crashes, injuries, and deaths. It includes twenty-two Georgia counties and covers most of metropolitan Atlanta. The primary goals of the program are to (1) reduce impaired driving crashes; (2) reduce excessive speeding; (3) increase safety belt usage; and (4) educate the public about traffic safety. 

“The H.E.A.T. initiative seeks to increase the impaired driver arrests, reduce dangerous speeders, educate the public about the dangers of DUI and provide a high visibility enforcement profile in the communities that need it most,” said GOHS Director Harris Blackwood in a news release. 

The APD’s H.E.A.T. Unit is developing and implementing strategies using traffic enforcement and education to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities from drugs and alcohol, speed and aggressive driving, as well as the non-use of safety belts during the grant period that began October 1 and continues through September 2013. 

As of Nov. 21, 2012, a total of 1,033 people had died on Georgia roads this year, a number that is higher than it was at the same time last year.

Meanwhile in other safe driving news, Fulton County commissioner Rob Pitts is pushing to ban cellphone use while driving in unincorporated portions of the county with hopes that cities within the county will eventually support the idea, too. What do you think of this?